Like a Rolling Stone
by p for pseudonymous
Summary: Ruby leans back against the vehicle as the sunset falls apart and scatters the last of its scarlet light across the golden paint job, and Ruby, too, blends in with this mosaic of liquid gold and strewn jewels: Ruby Lee Randle is just making her way through life like a rolling stone.
1. She's a Rainbow

Disclaimer: It should be noted that this document is a work of fanfiction and therefore any recognizable characters, events, ect. do not belong to me.

Song: She's a Rainbow by The Rolling Stones

* * *

Like A Rolling Stone

Chapter One: She's a Rainbow

* * *

_She comes in colors ev'rywhere_

_…_

_She's like a rainbow_

_Coming, colors in the air_

_Oh, everywhere_

_She comes in colors_

The year is 1965; it starts and ends on a Friday. Music is purchased on vinyl in old record stores with worn booths where people rock out behind shaded windows, perched on cracked leather chairs. All the boys in grammar school pass around the football in their front yards and swear that they'll grow up to be just like Joe Namath, the richest rookie in pro-football history at the time. The mini skirt makes its way across the English seas to the US; it is the fashion statement for girls of the sixties. Across more treacherous oceans the conflict in Vietnam worsens while within the town of Tulsa Oklahoma the self proclaimed Socs and Greasers wage their own war.

_She comes in colors ev'rywhere;_

_She combs her hair_

_She's like a rainbow_

_Coming, colors in the air_

_Oh, everywhere_

_She comes in colors_

A girl rides down a busted strip of road that divides the North and Southside, tempting fate. Her hand hangs out the open window, sun-lightened brunette hair catching in the wind drift, the Rolling Stone's _Heart of Stone_ playing on the radio. She doesn't wear one of those mini skirts that are oh-so popular for the time; though, she has plenty in her drawers at home. She wears a worn pair of jeans shorts, the ends fraying, a dark dyed cotton tank-top tucked into them where they sit high on her hips. A Levi's logo marks the cut-off's brand; a few seems are torn from the label so that the bottom corner twists upward.

_Have you seen her dressed in blue?_

_See the sky in front of you_

_And her face is like a sail_

_Speck of white so fair and pale_

_Have you seen a lady fairer?_

_She comes in colors ev'rywhere_

The sky is the color of just before sunset, a heavy blue like letting go. It contrasts deeply with the stark neon chrome of the open sign that hums in the Dingo's front window. A group of teens stands in an empty parking spot outside the front door, smoke twisting upward from the blunt ends of their cigarettes. The girl can smell it as the wind creases through her front window; she tilts her head back and lets the musty air gather in her lungs.

The car moves heavily, the seat pulled far from the foot pedals so that she must perch on the edge and brake with a stiff knee. The rearview mirror shows only the sky, and the way pink and orange seep into the sunset; either of her side mirrors reflect only cracked concrete and equally broken adolescent bodies passing by. The crowd of teens dressed all in jean and leather scatter as the girl in the car with the debatable view maneuvers the machine forward and into the some-what open spot. One boy leans forward from his safety on the curb, palm slamming down on the hood of the car. The girl slams her own palm down upon the center of the steering wheel, the horn blaring steady and loud—much as the brunette herself may be described—and turning heads. Girls like her often make a habit of such things.

_She combs her hair_

_She's like a rainbow_

_Coming, colors in the air_

_Oh, everywhere_

_She comes in colors_

Fingers raking through the bangs of her hair, she locks the door of the car, but leaves the windows down. A smooth body, deceptively whole among the shattered teens, sifts through the broken pieces toward the steady and loud brunette girl that makes a habit of turning heads.

Her friend does too.

"Angie, Doll," the brunette drawls, keys dangling in her hands and making ugly music in the air.

"What the fuck did I tell about calling me Angie, Ruby?" The brunette girl—Ruby—tosses her head back in a laugh, that same hair catching in the wind and spinning around her shoulders like the turmoil that clouts these times.

Angela Shepard is a sharp girl with spikes for heels at the backs of her shoes. She is every contradiction, all red lips and black hair like Snow White but with none of the innocence. The color of her nail polish is gunmetal gray, the same dull sheen as the weapon that the officers pack when they wield their injustice.

_Have you seen her all in gold?_

_Like a queen in days of old_

_She shoots her colors all around_

_Like a sunset going down_

_Have you seen a lady fairer?_

_She comes in colors ev'rywhere_

"Jack let you drive his car," Angela raises her eyebrow—narrow and sharp as the rest of her face—and Ruby cannot tell if the other girl is impressed or shocked. Perhaps both.

"Yeah," Ruby leans back against the vehicle as the sunset falls apart and scatters the last of its bloody light across the golden paint job, and Ruby, too, blends in with this mosaic of liquid gold and strewn jewels, "Steve had fixed it up at the DX so I brought it on down." She shrugs but there are more words resting upon the tension of her shoulders. They are words neither girl reads into; that's simply not something you do on this side of town.

A whistle cuts through the air, on time with the dawn of the first star in the descending twilight. He carries the night with him on a dark leather jacket—Jack Fonder—the light of the stars skirting around his eyes to keep his lashes dark, a brim upon the abyss. He smirks like the devil and kisses like one too.

Ruby sighs over these empty kisses, her lips reddened and true to her name. Jack's hand skims over the bare skin of Ruby's shoulder, eyes looking past her. They always do. "You didn't scratch the paint job didya' babe?" His eyes reflect in the windowpane, so dark they are almost black.

"Nah," she hooks an arm behind his neck, hand gripping the back collar of his leather jacket as the other dips into the front pocket of his jeans, "Stevie and I took real good care of it." She procures a little white box full of lung cancer and sins, pulls out a stick, and lights death herself off Saint Agnes' coin that hangs on a chain around Jack Fonder's neck, much like the girl.

"Good," Jack, runs a hand smoothly through his greased hair, leather slidding just as slick below his wrist to show the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. "I'm hittin' the drags this weekend." His finger warps the strap of Ruby's tank top, skimming below fabric and upon sun hot skin that holds the after glow of careless summer days. "I know how you like it when I got fast," he murmurs, too loud, still, dirty things to say in a crowd. Ruby's lashes flutter, like a butterfly on the wind.

_She combs her hair_

_She's like a rainbow_

_Coming, colors in the air_

_Oh, everywhere_

"Sure thing, hon'." Ruby takes a long drag from her cigarette, words a long sigh that carries her freedom on its breath, and uses her spare hand to pull on the length of brown that hangs by her ears, strands of dragging golden hair. Their bodies press closer together by her pull, jean on jean, and cotton were it strains.

"Mmm," Angela hums long and low in the back of her throat, "Virginia's gonna be there." Jack tosses his head back, taking in all of Angela: the talon nails and strip of bare skin between skirt and crop top. Instantaneously, the couple's closeness falls away.

"Yeah," Ruby says, dropping the ashy end of her fag and smothering the final drags with the toe of her shoe, white little things that show stains easy. Angela never keeps white clothes for that very reason; she's not quite sure how Ruby keeps them clean. "But Jane'll be there too and she digs okay."

"Yeah, alright."

"Besides, Stevie's racin'." Ruby smiles with a fleeting look that comes natural to her, slow movements that take longer to build than they do to pass. Her eyes are wide, a rim of brown like caramel whisky before they darken. They hold a gamble in them as though she's rocking the die in her hand.

"What, and you think your brother wants you there taggin' along?" Angela crosses her arms, chest heaving outward in a show of affliction or maybe just attention; it's an act she has learned gains the boy's eyes.

Ruby smirks lazily; it is as if she isn't really meaning to but can't find it in herself to regret the action. "Well shoot, Angi, just because your brothers don't want you hangin' around…"

"I just know where I ought to be and where I ain't."

"Shut up," Jack says, his words sharp but the lines of his face curving in gentle slops, a solid line across his jaw, and a wallop where his nose had been broken, one twice, three times. "Shepard just don't want ya whoring around with his boys."

Angela raises a finger, the metallic fire of her nails glinting in the muggy light of the Dingo's storefront. She'll pull the trigger, too; Angie has the guts to do it. She's a Shepard. "What the hell do you think you're saying, Fonder?" Her teeth are bared, white, crooked in the back, and as sharp as a shark's. You can see the pulse beneath the sweet skin at her neckline, throbbing heart covered in dripping perfume.

Jack crosses his arms behind his head where he and Ruby have disentangled, his sleeve dipping at dangerous levels once again, and revealing the perilous black glint of his tattoo. And when he grins it is disquieting and holds none of the hazy good nature as the girl with the heart of gold and the dice in her hands did. "I think you know exactly what I'm sayin'."

But when the abyss speaks—words of territory, and depthless fire—there is no way to know what is sincere. None of it may be. This is the simple answer we wish for but never the one we receive. And doubt is potent, an oppressive musk that asphyxiates the lungs with black powder and tears.

Ruby laughs, her nose crinkling under the pressure of such an undertaking, a stifling tension that leaves all others unaware, even herself. "You're always wanted here, Angie, Doll."

"The fuck did I tell you about callin' me Angie?" Angela narrows her eyes, blue things that retain the light even after it has passed.

Ruby puckers her lips, head tilting to the side. The look is innocent. She is a child. "I think you fucking told me to stop." The curse sounds guiltless as it passes her lips, a dagger coated in honey, and the sweetness lingers on her tongue long enough for Jack Fonder to swipe it away.

"I think you owe me a shake." Angela sways her hips, movements stirring the stagnant air. When she pulls open the door to the Dingo, metal and slick with teenage sweat and midsummer's night's precipitation, a blast of cool air curls their toes.

Jack grasps Ruby's hip, a sharp squeeze against her side through denim. "Grab me a soda, wouldya babe?" He follows Angela to a booth and moves with his own swagger, no swaying hips but a strut all the same.

"Jane," Ruby greets the girl at the counter: long torso, and wide hips, a curtain of lengthy blonde hair that curled under the acid treatment she gave it. She wears the uniform of a pink dress and a dirty apron, the bow had come undone so that it clings to her body only by the loop around her neck, gaping pocket full of napkins and straws.

Ruby taps the counter with the short end of her nail, clicking noise against the cheap plastic counter, sticky with soda and poor pickup lines. "Two shakes—strawberry and vanilla, and a coke."

"I can do that," Jane gives a tired grin, the smile that has only her heart and none of the hope. The smile of a girl who has lost more than she has gained. Ruby's just not quite sure what her cost is.

"That'll be a dollar twenty-five please." Ruby dishes out the cash, copper pennies catching the yellow light of the eatery and mixing with the silver color of the quarters and dimes. They roll together, from the warm pocket and comfort of blue lint to the plastic container of the cash register, a fast exchange.

White and pink and brown, she holds each color in her hand. The soda fizzling, she can feel the carbonation at the back of her throat without tasting it. The shakes are so thick that they do not even slosh with her movements across the room. And the girl with the three colors in her hands moves with an almost skip. It is as though she is stepping through a field of flowers rather than a sullied room with heavy teen bodies and heavy teen fears. The colors of the diner clash, black and dirty white, the sweet pink of the strawberry shake, and the sheen of red vinyl. And Ruby moves through this all, a blur of her own colors, an overflow of careless thought, a rainbow of rapid blush, a rushing of blood through veins. One may only hope that she does not lose her shine.

_She comes in colors_

_She's like a rainbow_

_Coming, colors in the air_

_Oh, everywhere_

_She comes in colors_


	2. Can you Hear the Music

Song: Can you Hear the Music by The Rolling Stones

* * *

Like a Rolling Stone

Chapter Two: Can you Hear the Music

* * *

_Can you hear the music? Can you hear the music?_

_Can you feel the magic hangin' in the air?_

The night hangs high in the air, a sheer curtain of mystification and adolescent delusion. The thin desires within such hours of darkness fissure, slithering through the open window of a second story bedroom, the only window that casts light upon the dead, dry grass of the yard, a single square of yellow to soften the edges of dusk.

The room sits still, crowded by this same yellow light and a set of white furniture, a small single-mattress bed, unmade but un-messy. A stereo sits on the floor; the tabletop of the dresser holds only makeup to conceal any near imperfections, to create a mask of lies, and magazines with tips and tricks to aid in such affairs, books of deception for girls whom treasure such hollowness. A hand reaches out, slim fingers, and nails painted in gunmetal gray. They run across the length of a black stick, a small little utensil to line the eyes with unbidden ambiguity when they are merely attempting to stand out. Angela takes the liner in one hand, a pocket lighter igniting in the other, and holds the coal precariously above the flame, softening it. The blackness slackens, and as she outlines the shape of her eyes it seeps further within her soul.

A second girl—Ruby—sashays about the room, the skirt of her dress hovering between layers of thick summer air as it lifts away from her thighs mid-spin, a flower opening its petals to the sky. She hums like the honeybees that collect the flowers' sweet nectar, the dancing melody playing tune with the speaker system: The Rolling Stone's _Satisfaction_. The rocking tone clashes carelessly with Ruby's saccharine manner, a single moment when sugar catches light upon the skin only to be licked, sucked away in devilish acts of sin with a boy whom finds profession in such tort.

Angela lies out on the bed; limbs stretched wide like a star and at times, one may find, she shines like one too. "So," The girl with the black hair and the pale skin and the eyes that sometimes shine huffs, cigarette held between puckered lips painted in a deep red that reminds Ruby of her own name. "Can you always see right into that chick's window?" Angela's eyes flick carelessly towards the house across the road, a streetlamp illuminating the empty jagged asphalt and then a second light like that of the yellow that is reflected upon Ruby's own yard. The neighbor-girl's own window is closed against the heat of the night but the glass pane is not so dirty that it cannot be seen through. Neighbor-girl folds her hands in her hair, picking up strands and twisting them experimentally.

"It's just as much that she can see into mine s'pose." Ruby shrugs, uncaring of her spotlight, and reaching to run her hands through her own stands of broken and dirtied gold.

Angela snorts, it is unladylike and shallow but familiar all the same. "You ever talk to her?"

Ruby remembers when the darkness of night was still new, and the loneliness it brought still hurt, drawing the sheets of her bed all the way up towards her chin, a flimsy shield, even then. When her mother was still alive, still laughed and breathed and wore a shade of lipstick that always reminded Ruby of spring flowers, the bed clothes smelled of mildew and fabric softener, each scent attempting to overawe the other. Now they just smell of sex and smoke. But when they didn't—oh, it's always before, always when something _didn't_—she would watch with wide eyes the color of whiskey, something that only Daddy drank, something she never knew the dizzying effects of, not the sharp sting it left in the throat, or the clouds it built within the mind, nor the way it tasted best if mixed with Coke, or they way it made things hurt less when mixed with nothing at all, she'd watch. She'd watch the lights turn on in that house across the street and watch the girl with no name that was nothing more than a ghost—she didn't exist, only fixed her hair and shook her skirts and when the light turned off she'd disappear.

"Nah, but I think her name is Carol." Ruby remembers that's what her mom's name was, still is she supposes. Or do people become nameless when they die, nothing more than a memory? But she remembers it anyways, remembers it etched into the hard marble of the gravestone and spoken by a man whom never knew her but stood behind a podium and wore the church's cross pinned to his chest as Ruby dropped spring flowers over her mother's casket. They reminded her of the lipstick she wore upon her lips. Ruby remembers, remembers how hard her father had grabbed her when she had said that out loud.

_Can you feel the magic? Oh, yeah_

_Love is a mystery I can't demystify, oh, no_

_And sometimes I wonder why we're here_

_But I don't care, I don't care_

There are no spring flowers by the riverside, if they even had the courage to grow, stiff petals shuddering in the breeze, they would have wilted in this summer heat. But it does smell heavily of unknown intimacy and smoke, the air saturated with a cancerous blaze and run-away morals. Ruby can feel the heels of her shoes sink into the grass, nature pulling her downwards towards where her riven purity has gathered in fragments. Angela flounces beside her, strides shortening as she steps away from the gravel of the parking lot.

The tailings of the lot are left generally un-scattered, only a few vehicles smothering the broken rock with their heavy rubber tires, paint like metallic fire, while the rest are parked upon the lawn and nearer the water's edge. The moon casts a silver light upon the processions, bodies moving like shadows, as if they are not a part of this world. And as the girls step farther still, they too depart from this stolid Earth.

Silver meets with gold, two metals tempered in fire, upon the hood of Jack Fonder's car. He perches here too, melting in his own metallic state beneath the night's inferno. Ruby makes her way towards him, a single jewel to decorate the hilt of this brazed sword, and away from the water's edge, a single breeze pushing forth that does nothing to cool her as she reaches out towards the flame.

_Can you hear the music? can you hear the music?_

_Can you feel the magic dancin' in the air?_

_Can you feel the magic? Oh, yeah_

Angela has slipped within the pulsing crowd, a separate heart from their own, seeking eyes against the atomicity. The river is still, a placid partition between lands, all piceous glass that holds within it the stars. A second girl approaches the edge, hair dragging, red like autumn that has no place in this season, and dandelions twisted in its braid. "Hello," The girl speaks, voice misty, and Angela can tell that she is already far-gone, nothing more than a corpse dancing among the rest of these bodies.

Angela frowns; the expression seems odd upon her features but not out of place. "Virginia," she greets the other girl, Virginia, Virginia, Virginia and nothing more because she was never given a second name. The girl with the hair the color of a time when everything is falling dips her foot into the water, breaking the fragile calmness of it with toes that are always bare. And she giggles, the noise mixing like odd music with the sound of the water wallowing, dropping back into place, the nuance of its compulsive action reverberating in circles across the gentle watercourse.

Virginia looks up at Angela, pupils blown wide so that her irises are nothing more than a rim of color about the contorted blackness, and the veins of redness leach the whites of their awareness. The girl with the contorted eyes smiles, a crooked thing that makes her nose crinkle and her freckles press together, a clot of copper skin; Angela imagines each penny dropping away, falling from her face and into the river without a wish to kiss upon each one. Virginia reaches into her pocket, eyes still wide, unblinking, and fixed upon Angela, and all the pennies stay in place. She'll get to hold onto her dreams for now, dance in them if she'd like. People like her usually do. The other girl shifts, turning away from the spectral eyes that seem to swallow the light; she feels the other girl's hand in her hair, twisting the strands, her skin warm and damp near her scalp, "You want some?"

"No, Sweet Virginia," Angela swats the other girl's hand away, a few black strands caught in curled fingers.

"You seem sad," Virginia speaks with that voice full of mist, fogging her own brain, her thoughts falling away until all she can do is rock and hum, dropping into the crowd like a fallen skeleton, all bones that rattle to the music, before Angela may even answer. She wasn't planning to anyways.

_Love is a mystery I can't demystify, oh, no_

_Sometimes I'm dancin' on air_

_But I get scared, I get scared_

The heat lingers in the car even as the shadows of tree branches stretch forth, fingers tensing at the reveal of more skin. And it curls around their bodies where Ruby straddles Jack Fonder in the driver's seat of his golden automobile; with every movement the fever upon the air seems to thicken, forcing their bodies apart. But like most things, he fights it.

Their breaths mix, lips nothing more than moments apart, and when they move they slide against each other. "I bet we get caught," Ruby gambles, whiskey eyes dark, and Jack feels as though he has gotten drunk off their color alone.

"You're gonna bet against us, baby? You're always gonna lose," he says, even as music trembles in the tipsy air, the crowd treading over grass the same way they do fortune, a luckless gathering.

_When I hear the drummer, get me in the groove_

_When I hear the guitar, makes me wanna move_

_Can you feel the magic, floatin' in the air?_

_Can you feel the magic? Oh, yeah_

The dress creases in his hands, folding over, and melting in the sheer heat of his actions. Their bodies collide with a fierce intensity only they can manage, hoods, and greasers, and all things impure. Impure as the very words Jack whispers in her ear. He cradles her back in his hands; though, this word sounds far too gentle for his actions, groping clothed skin, and pulling at hemlines. Ruby arches against him, any lustful sounds she breathes outward lost in the rage of the horn, her body pressing against the center of the steering wheel. She laughs, heavy and clouted with something unchaste.

"Told you…"

Jack grits his teeth, lips pressed against her neck, hands gripping her sides and pulling her closer, still, against him. "You did that on purpose." His jaw tightens, a firm line against the curve of her chest.

"I didn't," Ruby says, pulling at his fingers, fingers rough and callous as the boy they belong to, "I just know how to pony up."

"Don't I know it," his grin is sharp, a rebel glint in his eye, like he's trespassing on sacred grounds. "You were supposed to 'pony up' on me." His mouth closes upon the skin just above the neckline of her dress, teeth pulling and tasting the sugar of her simplicity. In the absence of her complication there many other voids to fill.

Ruby gasps, fingers sliding over the blotch at her collarbone, blood raised from the bottom of its veins to the surface of her skin. A mark blooming like a red rose, its thorns sharp. She straightens her arms against his chest, separating them further, a partition of wills and wicked intentions.

_Sometimes you're feelin' you've been pushed around_

_And your rainbow just ain't here_

_Don't you fear, don't you fear_

Jack Fonder reaches over, a supine movement, grasping the handle of the door and pushing it outward, the taught frame of his body rippling in its flexion, hard body beneath white threads, a street fighting man. He shifts before Ruby is fully out of the door, hips joining in one final tainted movement, a compression of two rogues, shackles as sharp as their volition. She moves like a bird, as if the thin air can lift her upwards; she lets it. But he moves in spite of the wind, against it; Jack's hand comes down upon Ruby's ass, against the fabric of her dress, a sharp movement that disputes chastity.

They gain only a few eyes, the music throbbing like the beat of a heart, too loud to dispute life and those whom fight it, their car-bound fever nothing more than background noise. The crowd osculates, flickering with silver light, and flitting through this world with careless abandon. They are tossed about by the ethereal waves of the river.

Across the Lookout—this riverside haven—Ruby recognizes a familiar truck, an enduring espy, the back laid out and two boys sitting upon the bed of it. One stands, knocking back the last of his beer, bottleneck gripped tight in his hand, before setting it back down, and holding a heavy gaze. The look is shared between familiar eyes, the action not reserved. Ruby relieves in a twisted grin, a smile of apathetic bliss.

_When you hear the music trouble disappears_

_When you hear the music ringin' in your ears_

_Can you feel the magic floatin' in the air?_

The music veils her broken skin, the prickling of the red mark above her heart thrumming thrill amidst the bass. She does not move towards her brother; the melody of the night separates them deeply. But she does throw up her hand in a two-finger salute, pointer and middle finger upon forehead, a simple movement, an empty careless gesture by an empty careless girl. The second boy curves his brow inward and heaves forward a bent, uneasy smile; despite it all he still looks tuff with his recklessly caring eyes.

_Can you hear the magic? Oh, yeah, yeah_

_When you hear the music ringin' in my ear_

_Can you hear the music? Oh, yeah_

The music works like morphine, dulling her restless senses, and her voice is serene, poised upon the cadence of the night. She clutches the back of his white t-shirt, fingers warping stiff cotton, her free hand running through the tresses of her hair, the color lost in the moonlight. And she sees the world in such grace of spotlessness despite the fissures, boiling upward and spilling their contents, mixing with the river water and corrupting the light of the stars that reflect so hopelessly upon the looking glass.

_Can you hear the drummer? Gets you in the groove_

_Can you hear the guitar? Make you wanna move? Yeah_

_Can you hear the music? Oh, yeah_

"You gonna make this up to me baby?" Jack Fonder murmurs his words above the electrifying air, straight spined and bitter against this girl with Technicolor rushing through her veins.

"Yeah," Ruby soughs, wind upon air, they are the same. She tosses her head back, allowing the sterling light to gather upon her skin so that Jack may steel it away, and crown it with his darkness.

Jack Fonder: the keeper of her sanity.

_Can you hear the music ringin' in my ear?_

_Can you hear the music? Can you hear the music?_


	3. Wildflowers

Note: I will be taking song requests for chapters. You can give me the song title and artist in a review. I will only be using older songs, nothing modern. Please keep in mind that if they do not fit into the plot line they will not be used but I will try my best to make them work. And it is likley this will help me update quicker!

Song: Wildflowers by Tom Petty

* * *

Like a Rolling Stone

Chapter Three: Wildflowers

* * *

_You belong among the wildflowers_

_You belong in a boat out at sea_

_Sail away, kill off the hours_

_You belong somewhere you feel free_

The car looks as though it is a boat floating steadily against the heat waves of summer. But it sits still, unmoving, and stagnant as the air that corroded its metal skeleton, more of a sea monster with green painted scales tearing through the rusty blood than an object to escape upon. Between the gaping, slathering, grease sodden jowls it holds a man, his legs bowlegged and bent. The boy seems relaxed within these depths, a fate-less child.

Ruby sidesteps the beast, hair sticking to the back of her neck in the slickness of her heated skin, and steps into the station instead. The mart is average in size, enough to fit a small group comfortably and a few shelves full of cloying snacks packaged in clear plastic and the dust they collect without the same hesitation as those whom chew on their contents beneath the fluorescent lighting. Her entrance comes with a sudden blast of cool air, the North wind come to sweep away all her frailty and ceaseless bearings, quiet things that she must often hush lest another hear them. But such burdensome creatures never seem to silence, not for long, not even in the syrupy heat or the lustrating air sent down by the tempest of the North. Nevertheless, she allows the wind to carry her like a bird with wings far too damaged to flutter, skimming upon the air of an empty world as the chimera tickles her ruffled feathers with the briery tips of its nails.

To simply exist in this world is a tiring thing, contemptible nuances of life vitiating the very thing that which they are. The boy behind the counter with the recklessly caring eyes does not seem to experience such a burden, but rather gains moxie by the very act of being; like when flowers grow without anyone being there to water them, adamant and daring green stems forcing through the gritty soil. Fearless things like them spend their whole lives fighting.

"Sodapop Curtis," Ruby's voice is an invitation to dance and each of their eyes do; two different shades of brown, the miry lake reflecting stars.

Soda, like the month of August, is fevered, heat that moistens the skin of others, always a beginning and an end all at the same time, cool summer nights and cool summer dreams, scorched rubber on pavement, drag races, and whisky sipped over whisky eyes. Summer is it's own single entity, a trinity of months that hangs in the air, the passage of time slow and unnoticeable. Everything changes in the summer but when the last fervor slickened seconds slip away everything settles again.

In the heat of two summers Ruby sweats.

"Hey Ruby," Soda smiles, white teeth and white soul, "Steve's in the back." He turns his thumb up, a simple gesture towards the garage, a room of metal and concrete that retains the absent coolness of this solstice.

Ruby nods, a low dip of her chin and a pair of roving eyes; they catch the mist of a dawning rain through the blurred window hissing as its algid droplets cascade upon the hot black paving of the parking lot; their whispers curse, a single invitation in the mind of a girl that furls with the same mystifying air they draw upward from the path. In the DX station the air grows stagnant, a veil of thick air between glass and a growing storm. The radio murmurs, a steadying hum above coarse thoughts. Ruby recognizes the song, but it isn't the Rolling Stones.

"Nah," she shakes her head, brown and gold and missing thoughts, words not said; they make for incomplete ideas, spontaneity. "I just want to dance."

The handsome boy with the white teeth and the white soul raises his brow, a curvature to frame the thick brown of his irises. He thrives upon spontaneity, a sudden impulse, a thudding desire that beats with his heart. Should the clock tick faster his movements will too. It is because of this that he turns the music higher, the volume dragging their spirits with it. Everything hangs in the air, above their heads, light, and halted only by the brevity of their thoughts.

_Run away, find you a lover_

_Go away somewhere all bright and new_

_I have seen no other_

_Who compares with you_

Ruby laughs, music to mix with the sound of the rain and the resonance of the stereo. The door creaks on its hinges, the glass fogging to outline the shape of her hands as heat and raw poise mix upon the pane. The world comes clearer, now, the sound of rain a single song, poetic and pure, each droplet shattering as it hits the ground, spreading life clearer across the soiled earth. She slips off her shoes, the harsh rocks dripping with fluid air so that they seem smooth against her soles, and uses them to prop the door open, radio chamber spilling into the open day.

They move like watercolors in the rain. All the edges are blurred, and nothing is defined, a hazy outline between themselves and the sky, they blend there, pieces of the wind. And the rain beads upon her skin, bird bones, each droplet a golden jewel reflecting the sun. He thinks she looks beautiful like that, all doused in liquid light. Their silhouettes move desperately, vibrations from deep within their marrow; such need is seen only from within. Children from this side of town are too good at playing poker, a full deck of cards clutched close to the chest, and Ruby likes to gamble.

Their laughter is all encompassing, a northward arrow pointing them in a direction they'll ignore as the storm rises and rain falls past their parted lips. They dance though it takes them nowhere and let their bodies crash through time.

Time. Neither is sure how much of it they have.

But they do know this: their hearts tick as these clocks, absentminded minutes passing away in their carelessness; when they fall they'll ignore the bruises, pain that touches their hearts, no matter how fleeting; they do not want to grow to be bitter people, toxic words seeping from their lips, pain staining their tongues. The others call them oblivious. Maybe they are. But is that so bad?

Or maybe they have more courage then the others, broken bones and purple skin. Maybe they're better off.

And maybe they'll never know the answers that they're looking for to the questions they do not know how to ask. Fragile things with angel wings poised upon the wind.

_You belong among the wildflowers_

_You belong in a boat out at sea_

_You belong with your love on your arm_

_You belong somewhere you feel free_

The sun separates from the clouds and they are broken into a kaleidoscope of colors. A car thunders by like a boat to drift upon the puddles, creating its own waves. There is a certain freedom that catches on the wind.

Steve leans out the door of the garage, one hand gripping the side and another shielding his eyes from the fierce light of the sun as the rain courses in rivulets upon the tin roof, each droplet like a bullet, their din chattering teeth. "What the hell are you guys doing?" The way he holds his hand above his eyes casts shadows upon his face, mist catching in his hair when the dewdrops winnow.

"We were just dancin', Stevie." Ruby knocks her heels together, a pool of summer rain rippling in her wake. She lifts her arms up, wet hair clinging to her cheeks, bunched in her hands. Her hips swing, the skirts of her dress cleaving against her thighs like carnal wanderings of the night.

Steve shakes his head; a sort of exasperation and fondness falls across is face with the shadows, the type of look that comes only with passing years, time spent close with someone always so distant. The mind creates its own barriers. "Put your shoes on before you step on some glass," he says, and the order sounds harsh as the rest of him but Ruby knows better.

They all do.

_Run away, go find a lover_

_Run away, let your heart be your guide_

_You deserve the deepest of cover_

_You belong in that home by and by_

Steve tells Ruby to go home but it is not often she listens to him; her wills are more of the wind, dragging her away, and ever changing. They pull her across the thick tar of Tulsa, stained with new rain, and into a booth wrapped in red vinyl, the deep-seated cracks clawing at the backs of her knees like those thoughts that tear away at her mind.

Jane sits across from her—"my shift just ended," she had said—a girl with eyes that have aged more than the rest of her body, slim waist and a million worries. Her hair is white as her fingertips where she wrings her hands together, worn and raw hands that are no longer able to rest. Uncertainties settle deep within her chest and heavy across her lips, the same two features that gather the mass amount of her tips. She's like a ghost, a pretty façade, and all too easy to shatter.

"Were you at that party last night?" Ruby asks. It's an absentminded question by an absentminded girl, each word soft and lilting as the sound of the rain upon the window.

"Mmhmm," Jane hums, the smoke of her cigarette blending with the thin outline of her body. Ruby sucks this smoke in too, her lips parting to catch it on her tongue and burn her lungs with. "I sure was. But I don't expect you to notice anything when you're around Jack." Her pink lips curl, the shape of the smoke twisting with them. They seem to spell words in a slick cursive hand neither can nor care to read.

Ruby shakes her head, her damp hair clinging to the column of her neck, water spilling over the red mark that had bloomed above her chest, a memory of pink blood. "Oh, you know how he is," she smiles, sweet and gentle, a wallowing flower freshly watered in summer rain.

"I know how all the boys are," Jane grins, stubbing out her cigarette, all her actions gentle as herself, a slight curve of the lips that does not show her teeth, and a light smothering of ashes, as someone wolf whistles behind her, sharp across the ears of two girls with petal soft skin.

Kathy leans over the table of their booth, palms flat against the dank gray counter, her smile just as razor-sharp and wolfish as the sound she had passed between her lips. "Don't we know it, girl."

"Kathy," Jane simpers, "I sure know you weren't at that party." People like Kathy and Jane are not meant to be close but the world forces them together, such contrasting images in a place that only allows a singular hate.

"Hell no," Kathy tosses her head back, her laugh bitter and dramatic, tresses spiraling like the rest of them in this world, blonde hair the work of the twisting hands of nature rather than her own as Jane's is, a flare that belongs only to her in a neighborhood where everything is taken from you. Kathy is more than a firecracker; she's the entire show. "I'd never go to a party on River King's territory, not with my brother always bein' there."

"Well, shit, Kathy," Ruby looks up at her past eyelashes that are dark with the raindrops still collected upon them, fake tears in a world that's only real when no one can see it, but still beautiful in a million different ways. "I'd say I see more of your brother than you do."

Kathy points a finger at her, bright pink nails to match the hue of her shirt, and outlines the shape of Ruby's hickey, a cherry blossom to be plucked and pried. "We _all_ know just how much of my brother you see."

Ruby titters, her nose creasing and her eyes pressing closed with the heaviness of her relief, a few drops of past rain roll across her cheeks and stain them with the black soot of her mascara.

Jane twists a napkin in her hand, leaning across the table to wipe away the streams of black tears and hot coal as she speaks, "I'd love to know just how much of a man he really is," she puckers her lips, "why… you don't have the exact measure in inches do you?" Her lashes flutter with her fleeting humor, a dancing object that cannot be captured.

"Oh, hell no," Kathy drops her finger, her own face crumpling as the other two laugh. Ruby leans over to whisper secret words within Jane's ear. Such secrets one will never know, for each girl knows how to keep them, lips that only part for bitter kisses. Jane's eyes go wide, her thumb swiping under Ruby's eyes to drag away the last of her blackness and fears, before leaning back in the seat of her booth. Kathy shakes her head at them, "Are we gettin' outta' here or what?" She speaks from the corner of her mouth, lips in a heavy pout that only spreads desire.

"Ooh," Jane stands, shaking out the skirts of her uniform, "What if we have a girl's night?" Her shoulders curve in their own question, her eyes dawning with all the hope she can draw from the pair to replace her own that escapes from working hands, that fissures through broken skin, and falls away in sweat.

Ruby nods, mind drawing on the memory of her father: an absent one. "Yeah, my dad ain't home we can all go over to my place."

_You belong among the wildflowers_

_You belong somewhere close to me_

_Far away from your trouble and worry_

_You belong somewhere you feel free_


	4. Dancing Days

Note: I am still taking song requests and have decided that those that do not fit into the plot of this story I will compile into a series of oneshots; though, if no song requests are given no oneshots will be made. If you have a particular story line in mind to go along with your song feel free to tell me. Also, please remember I will not be using modern songs.

Song: Dancing Days by Led Zepplin

* * *

Like a Rolling Stone

Chapter Four: Dancing Days

* * *

_Dancing days are here again_

_Summer evenings grow_

The memories of her parents are scattered, a collage of childhood dreams and immortal people with age that colors their eyes, the aching bones of growing up and the empty realization that Mom and Dad won't always have the answers… won't always be around to give those that they do.

Even when she was a child she knew that it had to end, that it already was; it was something dark, almost too harsh to hold within her small body, too sharp to grip between weak fingers, but it was there all the same. It was right next to that voice in her head that told her to run, run quick before you're caught because once it has you it wont let you go. But what she never realized is that it will happen to her anyways, that nobody can outrun time.

Sometimes Ruby sees her mother in herself, pieces that her father pulls apart from the whole of her puzzle in nights too dark and whisky too deep to feel timid within. The light of the stars does not reach this time, leaving these moments cast in shadows, the thick haze of drifting recollections. Hair of thick honey, a shade of candlelight and dark, melting wax, pooling upon fingertips and burning skin; eyes that sear, liquor down the throat; slim shoulders and the bones of a bird, light, and too easy to be blown away in the wind.

Her father is there too, though, because nothing can be entirely pure, not on this side of town. And when he leaves, stretches of days always unpredictable, and often without a goodbye before tires roll across barren pavement and he peddles himself away at another's home, words to be spoken to the wind and toes to have doors closed upon, these parts of herself are all she has to remember him by. To know that the whole of her face slopes, round from cheek to chin, the face of a child; and her personality that clings to things like a burden to the mind—addictive—nicotine, and alcohol, and sex, sometimes its all that she has to remember he's real, that he wasn't buried along with her mother.

A traveling salesman, he is. She once asked him what it was like, to go places where stars shine undisputed and the grass grows too long, not because no one cares to tend to it, but because it is too wild to be cut away, trimmed of the length of its life. "It's ugly everywhere," he had said, gruff and unforgiving, questioning her dreams.

She hopes he makes it somewhere beautiful one day because she isn't sure she'll be able to herself.

_I got my flower, I got my power_

_I got a woman who knows_

Within a house that is empty, perched upon a stretch of land that is always ugly and never missed, four girls draw upon the night, silhouettes of mischief and shadow.

"—Absolutely gorgeous," Kathy puckers her lips and purrs, a cat, limber and with great hair, all blonde and thick as her skin and bones, it curls in the same way as her sharp tongue, a dagger to the heart, golden across her breast.

Jane nods her head, almost solemn in the way she moves, humming an old tune that plays only when there are fireworks in the sky, flaming bombs and thick smoke to be remembered. She takes the small photo, four sides creased between lace and skin, and tucks it away between the strap of her bra, covering the face of the man she claims to adore, gentle hands and gentle words winding in the center of her stomach and curling her toes: short crew cut and stiff back, uniform ironed and clean, far more clean than anything on this side of town. She loves his stories, is all, that he can make her heart beat fast with nothing more than words of bullet shells and bleeding hearts. All anyone wants to feel is alive and people too often mix that with love.

"It's the uniform," Jane says.

"He looks so goddamn good you just _have_ to corrupt him," Angela's smile folds around the neck of a beer bottle, lipstick staining the dark glass. The color in her eyes sloshes with the drink in that bottle. She'd shown up like this, eyes outlined in charcoal and lips plumped, two bottles, one in each of her hands. The second had shattered upon dropping, shards of glass and bitter alcohol staining the concrete. "Like Ponyboy," she says, her eyes narrowing, sharpened with wayward intentions.

"Now if you want to talk about the Curtis brothers…" Ruby holds up her own bottle as if in a toast, to good looks and good wills, things that run out too fast, faster, even, than the drink in her hand.

"You know," Angela speaks, looking at the others through the reflection of a mirror marked with lipstick and fingerprints as she rolls the hem of her cotton shirt above her peddle-pushers, dark denim, purple cotton, and wicked grin. "Pony always hangs out at the movies…let's go to the Drive-In." She straightens the length of her neck, pale skin to be drawn between warm lips when she allows herself to only be scorched, blistering wounds that she allocates her pride upon.

"Sure, Angie," Ruby humms, music spilling, sloppy, messy, and fading away on impact.

"Don't fuckin' call me Angie."

"Hell," Kathy pinches the stem of a flower freshly bloomed in a vase of withering stems and fallen leaves like dreams, her own mind cloving through the hot color of wild nights, "that sounds like an okay idea," she tucks the blossom behind her ear, sweet honey and soft petals contrasting with lips dipped in poison and fingers stained with wine.

_I said it's alright, you know it's alright_

_I guess it's all in my heart_

_You'll be my only, my one and only_

_Is that the way it should start?_

The night air hangs heavy with cigarette haze, people mill about with hollow faithless eyes, and when they smile their dried skin cracks. They know nothing. Because there's something about summer nights that makes you feel as though you can't remember anything, like the name of that boy you just bumped into, the one you used to play with in your front yard before your older brother chased you off. But now you're all too old to play; and all the grass has died, yellowing in the sun; and you've since learned that there are far more frightening things to run from than your brother.

"Sorry," he says. His eyes are reckless, the sort of danger that comes only from caring too much, his jaw broad and yet his chin still narrow, the type of face that's too handsome to believe.

Maybe that's why Ruby blinks twice, eyes darkening each time her heart beats too hard within her chest and rattles the cage of her ribs. She wonders what she's keeping trapped inside there and whether or not it'd be a good idea to let it out. "Sodapop," and so it seems she hasn't forgotten, at least not entirely. "It's alright."

"What," He says, and his smile speaks for him, more words that Ruby cannot understand, pressed between his contrasting realities, "you're not gonna' ask me to dance this time?"

"This don't really seem like the time to dance," Ruby says. And it's odd the way actions are shared between siblings, like the way Ruby's eyebrows turn downward and inward, akin to the compression of Steve's features whenever he's serious. It is something more often seen on the boy, rough and callous and bitter enough for the both of them, rather than his sister, a daisy, a comely weed to grow between the cracks of society and soon be plucked away.

But Sodapop laughs anyways, as he often does, because it's the only thing he knows how to do; that's what all of his teachers once told him at least. But he doesn't have to hear from them anymore; their opinions are left in red ink to smear upon papers to be shredded. "You're an odd girl Ruby Lee," he shakes his head with the same fondness he captures within his eyes.

"Randle," Ruby adds, folding the plastic of her straw between her fingers.

Soda leans in, "What?" He asks just as Ruby uncoils her fingers from the straw, the plastic straightening, and Coca-Cola creating a smattering of syrupy freckles across his nose.

"My last name's Randle," Ruby answers, looking beyond the boy rather than at him as he straightens and wipes away the sweet fluid. But, still, more important things have been swiped from the pair of dreamers with less care than that and it ruined them. "I thought maybe you'd forgotten." But the way the corrupted light of the night creates an angle of Ruby's usually gentle face, slicing across the blackness of her pupils, and falling past her lips as though this wrecked radiance belongs within her rather than about her, makes her look like the forgetful one.

And she is, too—so absentminded that she has forgotten even that.

"'Course I didn't forget! It's my best friend's name too." Soda wipes his hands down the front of his jeans, dragging sweat and grease and the very bearing of his name across threads of denim that tear too easy; they rip against concrete and time like so many other things that he has learned to know and let go of.

Ruby sighs, her eyes gliding across Soda's face before falling into the distance again. She seems to look somewhere further than the splintered wood and metallic shine of the Drive-In, searching for something more. "Stevie," she answers as though not to let this conversation fall away from her grasp, to tease it with her attention before soon depriving it. And she has learned this in so many ways… to tease and deprive.

"Yeah," Soda says, looking behind himself to catch a glimpse of what Ruby's eyes may see but there is nothing more than a moving picture, black and white in the fall of night from a purple twilight long ago, and the passage of time, a painful progress that always moves either too fast or too slow but never in-between—never what they need it to be. "And I don't think he'd take too kindly to hearin' you call him that." Sodapop grasps her elbow, long fingers against skin that has grown thick in its time to hide sorrow and unfinished dreams. He pulls her forward, somewhere new. "Come on, why don't ya' show me where your friends are."

The crowd breaks away, harsh and unwilling, strained leather and nowhere near as slick as the grease in their hair; and there are those too that have learned to move for no one, that the shine of their shoes and the stripes on their clothes makes them better than those whom wear their gilt upon their skin and that shine within their hair. Neither has yet learned that either way it is a reflection of the light.

When Ruby moves it is without commotion, as though she is floating rather than stepping through space, the stars at her toes and the blank void of the unknown gliding upon her fingertips, and she dips below elbows so to slide away unnoticed. Her body seems so light and so fragile that it breaks for even the passing of the wind. She turns to him, one last time before this unforgiving crowd swallows her whole, and smiles.

_Crazy ways are evident_

_In the way you're wearin' your clothes_

_Sippin' booze is precedent_

_As the evening starts to glow_

Jane's car burns blue, a reflection of starlight and sound, light shimmering off windowpanes and car rocking under impassioned nights. Their bodies radiate heat and misdemeanors without the release of air-conditioning; the warmth seems to boil upon leather and skin beneath stitching.

Kathy leans forward, her body curving against her new companion; two pairs of humor filled eyes and a set of bowed lips that never learned when to stop. "Ruby, when you said you were gonna' get a Soda I thought you meant a tall glass of drink not a tall glass of hunk." She falls backward again, body shaking with laughter that comes too hard and fades too fast, and leaning in to murmur into the ear of the boy whom cackles with her, two wolves to howl at the moon.

Jane leans out the door of her car, a long length of leg and eyes that turn with the confusion of misery and life. "Heck," she hums, lips slanting in the same way as her body as she leans outward as though to fall away into nothing, "if I knew that's what you meant I would've asked for one too." Her words are lost upon her own ears; face too close to the speakers that carry drifting sounds to disinterested people.

"Lo', Sodapop," Kathy's companion speaks, loud words still rocking with laughter that has since been lost upon the others. The steel tone of his eyes is misleading in his simple nature, rust colored sideburns to cloak him all in metal hues. He seems to dance without moving, the alcohol twisting his body from the inside out.

"Hey, Two-bit," Soda says, words that conform to his casual demeanor. When he smiles again it's too gentle among this scattered rubble, broken pieces like the aftermath of a storm. But the tempest has yet to pass.

Angela drapes herself across the back end of the car, skin burning where the metal retains the heat of a past sun, but she ignores it as she does most things, allows her body to carry this heat within itself and burn throughout her veins. "Is Ponyboy here?"

Soda's lids fall across his eyes, shading them from the processions, but even then he can still see clearly; the grinding of his chin that pulls forward bare thoughts to be torn away from his mind. "Yeah," he scatters the gravel with the toe of his shoe, "he's here somewhere."

_You know it's alright, I said it's alright_

_You know it's all in my heart_

_You'll be my only, my one and only_

_Is that the way it should start?_

_Dig!_

Ruby procures a cigarette, her insides leeching to be blackened, and lights it, allowing the fire to hang in the air long after, until the flame of the lighter flickers in the wind and chews away at her sanity, burning the edges of her fingertips.

"You want a cig?" Ruby asks Sodapop, her own stick of cancer hanging from her lips, loose enough to fall away, but it hangs there, surly as the rest of them, tips reddening and will maddening in a way that only makes them tighten their grip.

Soda shakes his head and Ruby tosses the paper carton in the backseat of the car, shrugging casually, the cigarette staining her tongue with sickness and sin as she exhales ecstasy.

"Ain't you gonna' offer the rest of us one?" Angela asks. She's the kind of girl that only takes, fingers reaching farther than the complex upon her mind.

"Nahh," Ruby shakes her head, cigarette bobbing with the curl of her lips, "I'm alright." She has since learned to grasp tightly onto what is hers. Some things are too easily lost.

_You told your mamma I'd get you home_

_But you didn't say I had no car_

_I saw a lion, he was standin' alone_

_With a tadpole in a jar_

Ruby seems separate from the rest of them, from this broken world, the smoke of her cigarette hanging long upon the dreary air. She walks only in shadowy paths, keeping herself simple and childlike, a dewy temperament and words of thoughtful disposition. But she is lost, plagued to wander alone and desperate throughout all her life.

A passing realization seems to dawn across her face, the widening of her eyes of addiction before her heart falls away. She sees him, even as he stands darker than the night, his harsh obsidian outline dwarfing the light of the stars. She lifts a gentle hand and waves even as the saltwater in her veins rushes to her heart. "Oh," she says, resting her palm over the frozen center of her chest, her lip quirking upward. "_Oh._"

_You know it's alright, I said it's alright_

_I guess it's all in my heart, heart, heart_

_You'll be my only, my one and only_

_Is that the way it should start?_

Two-bit looks at her curiously, the light of a child in his eyes all drawn up with the refusal to grow old. "You okay?"

"Yes," Ruby says, as sure and sharp as the cut of a jewel. "It's just Jack." She straightens herself, the ashes of her cigarette falling across her skin in their own fire of red and orange, but she ignores them and without the tender care to stoke their burning desires they fall away, withered and gray, leaving only their mark upon her skin, throbbing and red as her heart.

_So dancing days are here again_

_As the summer evenings grow_

_You are my flower, you are my power_

_You are my woman who knows_

"I haven't seen him in so long." Ruby tells them, reaching outward to pull the flower from Kathy's hair, it falls away, a curtain of gold between mystification and hungry need. The petals blend with the softness of her skin, fragile things that wither too easily in angry hands.

Kathy shakes her head; fingers plucking away at the sepals that build a delicate tower about the mind, each one shatters like a nerve in pitiless hands. They fall away and rest to weep at the girls' feet. "It's only been two days," Kathy puckers her lips, a drawn and heavy glower without the anger to make it sting.

"I know, Doll." Ruby says, swatting away Kathy's hand, her body drawing in on itself, eyes wide, questioning, and fingers tangling in the threads of her hair where a few petals have caught. But she never gets her answers, never even allows the questions to fall past her lips. They are poison to the brain. Let her be happy, let her ache with it.

_I said it's alright, you know it's alright_

_You know it's all in my heart_

_You'll be my only, yes, my one and only, yes_

_Is that the way it should start?_

_I know it is, yeah!_


	5. Losing my Touch

Note: I have been contemplating making this story rated M. Please tell me if the current chapters warrent this rating or if you would like me to write more mature romance scenes in the future. I am also still taking song requests.

Song: Losing my Touch by The Rolling Stones

* * *

Like a Rolling Stone

Chapter Five: Losing my Touch

* * *

_Ain't it funny how things happen_

_Just as we think we've got it all straight_

It was his hands that were trembling, not hers.

She has the heart of a child, always falling in and out of love; one comes to expect purple skin and scarlet blood, always losing. Her memories fall away by the days, tattered black and white photographs if anyone had cared enough to capture them, but there is a certain sharpness that cuts with the remembrance of Jack Fonder.

Her bruises bloom yellow—they say there is a rebel boy in town with eyes of the same hue, she thinks she'd like to meet him some day—dandelions in the sun, nothing but weeds that children gather for their mothers to throw away. They overlap with twilight scars, blue and green, tender to the touch so that he presses on them with rough fingers and she tells herself she takes pleasure in this pain.

Because it had been his hands that had trembled, not hers.

Theirs is a stunt of eagerness that nearly takes their lives and still she screams when their souls collide, contrasting black and bumbling gold.

But it was his hands that had trembled, not hers.

_Everything seems to be moving forward_

_But instead we just sit around and wait_

She lies, wrapped in sheets that she burns a hole through with the end of her cigarette, sex hanging in the air, at a time when she cannot name the color of the sky. Her mouth still tastes like him. It doesn't bother her much anymore.

Her lips slide across bare skin a cold flesh, across a tattoo in the shape of a crown too black to be studded with rubies, but she can still feel the edges drawing blood from her lips, cool metal and scarlet ichor. She wants this blackness in her veins; she knows it is her only survival.

_Seems things are in a lockdown_

_Nervous looks all around_

_Everyone is speaking in whispers_

_No one wants to make a sound_

There is always a long silence after fucking—because it is too harsh to be called making love, there are too many wars fought with bullets and without remorse—drawn velvet curtains the color of their insides. They have been folded into each other and it burns the same way sunlight scorches the devil.

She would cry for them, or pray, but she believes in neither tears nor god… at least not any that would save them.

Her eyes glide: vitreous like dirty windowpanes, dusty stained glass high in church skylights, and she runs her hand through her hair because she has nothing else to grab hold to as her world tilts and the air halts in her lungs when Jack stands. He's bare for a moment, and she takes all this time to look, scars and hate exposed fully to her, not wrapped in fabric or buried in her caverns, beneath her skin, clutched between her fingers, corrupting what is already distorted.

"Jack," she whispers, and neither says a word for a moment. Both know how much she keens to say his name, to scream it.

The final ashes of her cigarette stain her fingers black and fall across her chest.

_I'm losing my touch, yeah_

_Losing my touch_

_Losing my touch baby, way too much_

_Baby, get me out of here_

_It should be clear_

"Can't you stay?" Ruby asks. Her eyes outline the red ribbons on his back that she had left with her nails, all haste and pent up passion.

The air in the room curls with her insides, sunlight beginning its slow smolder through the day, burning its way past her windowpane. Jack Fonder's muscles tense, "you know I've got things to do, Baby." He balls up the cotton of his t-shirt in his fist, using the other hand to open the door. It sounds harsh in this room, the turn of the handle, like leaving something behind.

_Keep an eye on your front door, baby_

_I'll be slipping in round the back_

_I just need a little, a little cab fare_

_And then I'll let you hit the sack_

Steve is downstairs, hands clenched, face warped and twisted and so _angry_. Angry for reasons Ruby doesn't know, some things she will never understand. She is too fragile for such emotion, her body too thin, skin like china-wear, glass. She shakes only with lust and lost life, sins of love.

She doesn't blush when Steve's eyes rove over the claw marks on the back of Jack's skin, etched with sharp nails, or her bruises, pressed into her skin by fervor. And when Jack kisses her hard, slipping his hand into her back pocket and leaving a dollar bill there like a petal-less flower to grow by his touch, and groping at her through her shirt, yes, even then, she does not blush.

"What," Steve says, "you gotta pay for a good score now, Jack?" Steve is coiled for a brawl, tight muscles and eyes like fire. He's a greaser kid who never did learn how to stay away from a fight, junkyard dogs that die by another's fangs.

"Oh, Stevie," Ruby sighs. Jack just smirks, sharp teeth and narrow eyes; he likes to watch people self-destruct, the same inferno he'll burn in some day.

Ruby stumbles when two bodies barrel past her and through another open door, always away, harsh, and never with the time to contemplate. Fists make purple skin and black eyes, crimson blood to sign your name in. It doesn't hurt at first, that doesn't come until later. Adrenaline rushes, a pure drug through their veins, nerve endings snapping, never growing back; and yet, they still feel too much.

Jack's body breaks through the porch railing, splintered wood and bones, Steve's hands pulling at his jaw, crashing against solid steel and rock. These are the things they are made of: fears, and lies, and all things unreal, crude open wounds and bleeding hearts, cleaving rock like an avalanche. They will all come crashing down.

Steve's head meets pavement, a bloody kiss to stain in red lipstick years later in the memory of violence. It comes with a sound that echoes like fireworks and words said in empty rooms, gut clenching, wrenching, up heaving. Something about their insides shifts.

This is the sort of scuffle that burns bright and fast, like a tornado that touches down for only a few moments, seconds that thrum with the heart, and yet still long enough to tear apart a town, miles of destruction. It happens when one doesn't care enough about what he's fighting for, only the feel of fists on flesh and the numbness of a medicine that pumps without needles. It is a sickness that cannot be cured by its prescription pill, white, joint pains, round, bloodshot eyes.

Jack stands on heavy feet for a moment, surly and mean, lopsided in his footing. He turns around and salutes them before turning the corner of the street, bumping shoulders with another hood boy along the way. Steve stands swiftly, shifting eyes, a headache that will not soon pass, watching him go.

Ruby waves, feeling as though her hand will be snatched from the sky, broken fingers like birds' wings, unable to fly.

_'Cause I'm losing my touch_

_Losing my touch_

_Yes I'm losing my touch way too much_

_Baby, get me out of here_

_It should be clear, yes_

The kitchen feels cool, the compression of air after a fierce storm. The water burns, red hands to match the shade of blood that has risen to the surface of their lives for them to flounder and drown within. The rag in Ruby's hands is threadbare, thin as the metal they use to protect themselves with, and it will tinge harshly with the color seeping from the back of her brother's head.

"Why do you do this to yourself, Ruby?" Steve asks, fingers skimming over the trail of blood at the back of his neck, catching it like one does water in their hands, only for a moment and then not at all.

Ruby stands, the soaked cloth in her hands, dripping a puddle on the floor. She has brought the storm inside with them. "Do what?" she asks, wringing out the cloth, the water gushing, falling at her feet, and she is mindless to it all.

He takes up her arm in his hand, the water spindling on her wrists and clinging to her skin, discolored and damaged, and curses beneath his breath.

She smiles, serenely, as one would in the dark. "We love each other."

"Damn it!" Steve slams his palm down upon the counter, but he, rather than Ruby, is the one to shudder at his outburst or, perhaps, because of it. "What about this is," he pauses, as though such a soft word is not able to pass his unforgiving lips, "…love?" It sounds angry and harsh, all oposition of the word's definition.

"Oh, you know, Stevie. Sometimes when you're with a girl things just get rough." She reaches around his head, a cage of ideas, enrapturing, and presses the dull cloth to his wound.

"Not like this." He shakes his head, the cloth tearing at his skin where his sister has pressed too hard. But she had such gentle hands; maybe they are all just falling apart.

"I'm just one of those girls that likes it like that." Her nose scrunches up and she giggles as though she's talking to one of her girlfriend's beneath the comforter of her bed by lamplight, when intentions are slow and words come too fast. Her feet shuffle, the water vibrating with her psyche.

"Clean this goddamn mess up," Steve tells her, face twisted.

_I ain't going to keep it long, baby_

_But just long, long enough_

_I've got to pick up my passports_

_And I've got to get my stuff_

The sun rises high as they fall lower, blue sky and no cloud. The clock marks away minutes that they will never get back, that they never even notice have passed. Ruby's mouth makes the shape of an O like omissive or outrageous or oblivious. "You should be going on to the drag now," she tells Steve.

"Yeah," he gathers himself, car keys with jagged teeth, and a grease rag in his back pocket. "I'm meeting Soda." She watches him go, the collar of his shirt stained with his own ferocity. She's not sure she'll be able to wash it out later.

_'Cause I'm losing my touch_

_Just losing my touch, baby, baby, baby_

_I'm losing my touch way, way too much_

_Baby, get me out of here_

_Well it must be clear_

She is a doll with cracks in her porcelain skin that cut her insides each time it shifts. She spreads false pigments across her face and it is as though she is replacing herself, mascara smudges at the corners of her eyes, and little bracelet bruises. She wears bright red lipstick, staining her entire essence, to match the swollen parts where he bit her lips.

She is fragile, infallible, warped by other's hands, but still untouchable. She dresses in lace, ties ribbons on her ribs, and lets those caged birds sing behind that prison of calcium bones, wings fluttering at the same rate of her heart. Lastly, she hides the broken missing pieces of herself in the drawer of her desk and pretends that she is whole.

_Losing my touch_

_Yes I'm losing my touch_

_Yes I'm losing my touch way too much_

_Baby get me out of here_


End file.
